Kris Knoblauch Sticks Up For Players
EDMONTON — Game two goes down tonight.
The Edmonton Oilers look to get back into their series against the Vancouver Canucks tonight – and head back to Rogers Place with a 1-1 tied series. A few things are unfortunately up in the air for the team right now.
Adam Henrique and Leon Draisaitl are both considered “day-to-day” and we should find out at morning skate about whether or not they are ready to play tonight. If not, expect some lineup changes – but not necessarily the same lines that were seen at yesterday’s practice.
Leon Draisaitl. Bob Frid-USA TODAY Sports
Kris Knoblauch gave his usual media scrum after practice yesterday. He’s very forthcoming about his thought process on a lot of different things in general. Yesterday saw him dive into a couple of different stat related questions.
One was about the lack of hits from Vincent Desharnais, Cody Ceci and Darnell Nurse. He had this to say, “especially if you are a defenseman, if you don’t have a hit it’s usually because you are playing in the offensive zone all the time – and you aren’t in a position to defend and make those hits. Now, do I think that was the case last night? No, that wasn’t it.”
Kris Knoblauch. James Carey Lauder-USA TODAY Sports
He went on to talk about a few stats that he doesn’t see a lot of value in, “There are certain stats that I take very little merit in. One is hits – the giveaway, takeaways at the end of the night. There is a lot of information that is very valuable. Those three? I take with a grain of salt each night after when I’m looking at the stat sheet.”
After that he emphasized what his focus has been with the Oilers defense since he took over as head coach, “the biggest goal with our defense is we want to be moving the puck out well and efficiently.”
Cody Ceci. Bob Frid-USA TODAY Sports
As far as the physicality goes, Knoblauch doesn’t want to see defenders getting out of position to defend just to throw a hit, “you’re going one direction while the puck and the opposition is going the other way and you don’t have the momentum to recover to come back to your net. Often, you might make some big hits, but a lot of those hits you get out of position.”
“Paul [Coffey] and myself, we have been telling our players all year that yes – we do want physicality. But more importantly is we want strong positional play, good sticks to break up passes, and then after that the physicality is important.”
Any Oilers fan would find it tough to disagree with Knoblauch here. At the end of the day, it’s more important to play a solid defensive game than to throw big hits – and it’s nice to see the head coach recognize that here.
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